


Territorial

by Mazeem



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alpha Steve, Alpha/Omega, BAMF Pepper, F/M, Omega Tony Stark, Protective Pepper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-22 22:21:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazeem/pseuds/Mazeem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Omega Tony is freaked out. Alpha Pepper is homicidal. Alpha Steve doesn't understand the fuss. To quote Bruce, "Who else can put two and two together?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, readers; this is a fill for a prompt on the avengers kinkmeme:
> 
> ''Tony comes running to Pepper after another Alpha or dom (preferably Steve) tries to make a move on him. She hides him (maybe puts the penthouse on lockdown?) and goes looking for him. She catches up to him in an Avengers meeting and takes. him. down. The others just watch, because a) she has the legal right to do so and b) they're scared of her. Pure animalistic rage, but no major injury. She just makes her displeasure obvious.
> 
> Bonus points for this line: "If you ever touch him again, pain will be the least of what I do to you."  
> http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/16019.html?thread=34533011#t34533011 ''
> 
> It uses feline!ABO rather than canine. Hope you like it!

Pepper had just received an infuriating, disappointing and frustrating email from a company declining to continue its previous wholesale contract of Stark medical scanners. There was no substantive reason given and the tone was only one step up from dismissive. This was all the more frustrating because she had spoken to the sender many times over business lunches, and had thought they had some sort of rapport.

Apparently not. 

As a result, when the door opened and Tony came in (it had to be Tony, her entire security staff let him run riot), she didn't bother looking up. The third draft of her reply held her attention, amplified by the nagging knowledge that this situation had already eaten through her lunch fifteen minutes and her half an hour of post-lunch email-checking.

Then Tony began pacing. On his third circuit she sighed and looked up from the screen.

"What is it ... Tony?" He looked frazzled. Jittery. Anxious. The last time she'd seen an expression like that on his face, he had admitted to being a "piping hot mess". "Are you ok?" She stood up. "Are you having an anxiety attack?" 

He, Steve, Natasha and Clint had returned the previous day from a mission - had something triggered him and it was only kicking in now?

"Uh, no." He ran one hand through his hair; its hedgehog appearance showed that this wasn't the first time he'd done that. "Not that I'm the best person, maybe, since the first time I had one I thought I was having a heart attack, but uh ...” 

"Tony, what's - " She hurried out from behind the desk.

"Been a while since that's happened so maybe my frame of reference is off, but, you know, I don't actually feel like I'm dying, so, I'm going to go with no. Just a bit freaked out. Yeah."

"Tony!" 

He gave her one of those horrible paparazzi smiles that crinkled right up to his eyes but still looked fake. 

"It's probably a compliment. That's definitely what reporters would say. I mean, right? Who wouldn't?" A harsh purr dragged underneath his words. It raised her hackles immediately.

A purr was like a car engine. Once you knew how it sounded one way, you immediately noticed the other. It had taken Tony’s fight with Vanko for her to realise that what she had been accustomed to hearing from Tony was the bad, self-soothing sort of purr that meant pain or distress. She had managed to get rid of it … just in time for the events of New York which brought it back again. The last time she had heard it had been from the painful recovery from what he did insist on calling his reactorectomy.

"Tony, would you just tell me what happened already?" She grabbed hold of his arms and shook him. Doing that shifted his arms around, exposing the most potent scent glands, under his arms, and for the first time she paid attention to how he smelled. Or rather, the other scent almost obscuring the pheromonal alarm calls. 

An alpha's. 

Steve's. 

She stared at Tony, who stared back with wide eyes for a long minute.

"It was nothing bad." It was only when he rolled his eyes at her and moved his head that she realised she had started frantically tucking his hair behind his ears and smoothing her hands over his chest to try and put her scent back where it belonged. She swallowed and got a grip on herself.

"What was it, then?" God, Tony. Getting information was like getting babies out of a Beta.

"He just ... well. He has pride formation ideas up the wazoo. My own fault for coming up with the 'team name'. He thought I would ‘benefit from the experience’. Well, he didn’t quite put it like that; I like it better like that, it sounds like a parent persuading their geeky kid into soccer camp."

"How did he try to do it?" she demanded. There were words for a pack leader taking in a new member. Tony would no doubt note that many of them started with ‘a’; assimilate, adopt, acquire. Assemble.

"No sex, no force. Just … crowded me. Told me I was missing out, I'd be happier, that sort of stuff. It’s not that he’s hard to say no to; you know me, I can say no to anyone in like, five different languages. And he can be a hell of a jerk - this is exhibit, what now, G, of that? - and it’s usually really fun to deny idiots what they’re after. It’s just that after he ignored ‘no’, and believe me, it wasn’t just monosyballic; there was eloquence and logic and I’m pretty damn certain I called him Methuselah, it … it got a bit trickier, with his arm around me, using his field tone, one hand on my neck. He understood fuck off well enough, though." He put his arms around her waist and rested his head on her shoulder. His heartbeat was fast, and he was quivering so slightly that she hadn’t noticed until now.

Tony wasn't a pride person. He liked people in his own way, in his own time, and both of those were not very often. He was, however, very, very good at putting on the opposite mask. If Steve had been an errant reporter, then she could have just about comprehended him seeing Tony as a sociable extrovert lacking the structured environment and constant support of a pride. 

However, Steve had been living in the same place as Tony for several weeks and fought with him as a team member three times now. To ignore how Tony was naturally wired and to do ... to do what? To try and kidnap him from her!

Pepper snarled. She didn't like doing it; it hurt her throat through lack of practise and flared subconscious guilt from a long upbringing where alpha females were calm and restrained and quiet and managed their Omegas without all the messy fuss of alpha men. She couldn't help it, though. This went beyond her subconscious and straight down into the dark nest of instincts at the base of her brain.

Responding to those instincts, she lifted Tony’s head from her shoulder and kissed him hard. Her hands flew from one scent spot to another: from his ears to his underarms, then underneath his worn T-shirt to his nipples and down his jeans and underwear to his groin. Her actions made his scent mingle with the sweat from her palms so that she could smear the mixture all over him. Marking him; claiming him.

“Mine,” she whispered, pulling away so little that their lips brushed as she spoke. He looked at her with eyes that were hazy from her unusually strong pheromones, and, of course, also from her hand down his pants. 

“Yeah,” he said at the same volume, and lightly nudged her cheek with his. She took possession of his mouth again and continued to jerk him off. He reached to reciprocate for her, but she slapped his hands away. Yes, she was getting seriously hot under the collar – seeing him aroused out of heat always sent her hormones flying – but this wasn’t about sex. This was about reminding him that he was special. Her mate. Her one person in the world.

It didn’t take long before he mewed a warning against her tongue. She carefully repositioned herself so that his emission wouldn’t stain her skirt, then rolled up her sleeves and caught the majority of it in her hands. She wrung her hands together like it was soap, then rubbed it into the pulse points of her neck and wrists. 

“New perfume, dear?” Tony’s arch voice didn’t fool her, but then it wasn’t supposed to. He knew what she was planning. 

“Putting on the warpaint,” she agreed. They shared fierce looks. Tony shifted so that they were squarely face-to-face again, then took her hands in his hands and kissed her. She returned it calmly, but couldn’t help but grin when she felt his fingers curving over her ears, fingertips against her own glands. Adding the finishing touches.

She stepped away. Straightened her skirt. Shook her head until her hair waved erratically. Tony’s expression of vengeful glee met her own of steely determination. 

“Will you be ok?” 

He shrugged and did up his pants. “I’ll be in the lab.”

She nodded. “Good.”

He was almost at the private elevator which led directly to her and Tony’s areas of the tower before Pepper realised, “Where is he?”

“JARVIS?” Tony called, pressing the button. Pepper waited for a tense second, uncertain whether Tony was asking for the elevator to be speeded up, or to answer her question.

“Captain Rogers in in the common room of floor 87, along with Dr Banner and Agents Romanov and Barton.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepper teaches Steve a lesson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much to everyone who has commented and/or given kudos! I'm glad you all like the premise of the fic, especially since it's my first shot at ABO of any kind.

Anger ignited and blossomed like flames with every step she took. The journey to floor 87 was a blur. She came back to herself for long enough to type in her master passcode to enter the common room via a back door. Once the door opened, her eyes flew to Steve like magnets to metal. She crossed the floor between them (it felt like she was floating) and slapped him across the face. 

It made a beautifully sharp, loud noise, but Steve barely reacted. His head turned gently to the side and his mouth fell open. So she slapped him again with her other hand, so hard that her palm burned and throbbed. An even better noise this time. Steve’s cheeks were going red. She moved to strike him again, but he caught both her wrists. His mouth was moving, but she wasn’t going to bother to pick out his words from the thrum of blood in her ears. Both hands immovably jammed. Right. She kneed him in the groin, putting her weight behind the blow just like Happy had reluctantly taught her.

He made a strangled noise and doubled over. A high, rough yowl of victory sounded. It might have been in her head or it might have been out loud; it didn’t even sound like her. She shifted her weight and drew back her foot. 

“Pepper!” The voice was faint and she would have ignored it if it wasn’t for the firm hand on her shoulder that pulled her off-balance, spoiling her kick. She growled without taking her eyes off Steve, and tried to shove away that restraining hand. It refused to budge. Her eye line to Steve was disrupted by somebody standing between them. She spat fury at them. They let out a soft warning growl. 

Clint, her forebrain belatedly informed her. You’re spitting at Clint. And Natasha is the one holding your shoulder. 

A thought hit her like a bucket full of ice. 

Steve had wanted Tony to join his pride. This presumably meant he had a pride, since, well, if you had any common sense you didn’t ask Tony to be the first person to do things. It gave him too much leeway to decline. And presumably, the pride was the team. She had just attacked the pride leader, and whether fellow Alphas Clint and Natasha were co-leaders or tagalongs, they would be biologically driven to defend Steve and see her off. 

These two could kill her without blinking. They could probably come up with a way to kill her by blinking. 

The dense red fog of rage retreated from her mind, allowing her forebrain to sit up and swear very inventively. She averted her eyes and dropped tension from her body as best she could. The hand on her shoulder relaxed correspondingly, and the relief of knowing she wasn’t about to suffer a horrific injury overwhelmed the faint compulsion to seize the advantage. Silence fell. 

“So.” She looked cautiously up at Clint when he spoke. His pupils were huge and his nostrils were flared, but other than that he looked unbothered. “I’m guessing that trying to kick Steve in the head with your very pointy shoes wasn’t a greeting of rainbows and unicorns?”

“No.” She took a deep breath, in and out. Her heart was still racing. “I understand you had to stop me, but – “

“Had to?” she heard Natasha murmur behind her. Clint looked over Pepper’s shoulder at her, but if there was some sort of communication there Pepper couldn’t tell what it had said.

“Of course we stopped you. You were in the killzone. You weren’t going to stop.”

Pepper licked her lips. “No.” Behind Clint she saw Steve slowly getting to his feet. The rage descended again - 

Stay down where I put you!

\- and she was jolted back into herself by Natasha’s arm across her chest. Her hackles were so far up that every root itched. Clint was so close to her he was filling most of her field of vision.

“Stay down, Steve.” Bruce’s voice echoed her thoughts. 

“But – “

She yowled and spat in the direction of Steve’s voice.

“On the floor, eyes down, shut up.” The harshness of Bruce’s voice both thrilled and confused her. He agreed with her – but why? She cast a look in his direction; he was sat on a chair, tapping his fingers rapidly against it. His eyes were firmly fixed on his tapping hand so as to not accidentally draw the ire of any of the edgy Alphas in the room. “Now then. Pepper smells like Tony, and if you weren’t busy grappling you could see that Steve knows why he’s being attacked by an Alpha in a killing rage. Who else can put two and two together?”

“If we weren’t grappling, Pepper would be in trouble,” Clint muttered, but he was overridden by Natasha’s sharp demand;

“Rogers, what did you do to Stark?” She let go of Pepper. 

"And we've made four, ladies and gentleman." Bruce's dry voice was loud in the sudden, ringing silence. The silence stretched for fifty long seconds as Pepper stared at Steve and waited for him to speak. Eventually he shifted from his hands and knees to his rear. She noticed with satisfaction that he kept his legs wide, and that his cheeks were red and swollen. He raised his head and met her eyes. She glared back at him. When he didn't drop his gaze, she slapped him again. Her hand throbbed in time with her pulse, but it was worth it.

"Ow!" His tone was faintly outraged. As if he thought he'd suffered enough. Calmly, she knelt down to his level, close enough that they were nearly nose to nose.

"If you ever touch him again, pain will be the least of what I do to you."

His expression was bewildered. For the first time his eyes dropped, darting to and fro. It wasn't submission, but she'd take it as a start. "I didn't - you're acting like I tried to bond with him or something!"

Now it was her turn to feel confused. She sat back on her haunches. "Steve, what does a pride mean to you?"

Steve answered immediately. "My Commandos." She cocked her head to one side, silently demanding more. He frowned and thought for several seconds. "Co-operation. Loyalty. Security." 

"Tony was right. You've got a semantic issue. Your team isn't the same as your pride. Not always."

Steve paused then nodded his head. "I know that."

"What's the difference, then?"

He opened his mouth, then shut it again and lowered his eyes from hers. 

"Is the difference sex, Steve?"

His mouth opened and shut several times. "I would never ... that wasn't my ..." He swallowed and bit his lip. He looked so young.

She realised with a thrill that she had stopped watching his eyes in favour of watching his pulse thump in his neck.

"I was going to ask you!" he burst out. She snorted.

"What, when Tony said no?"

He scowled. "I thought that was an 'if' at the time."

She shook her head. "You're clueless, aren't you?" She ignored his faint hiss and undulating hackles. "Ok. Putting aside the fact that a pride without an omega is, by most traditional standards, not a pride at all, a bonded Alpha holds the highest rank. Would you submit to me?" She smiled to herself as his head jerked up in an instinctive refusal. "Would you want to co-lead, then? There are a lot of Alphas in here, Steve."

"Whoa, whoa, this is about us now?" They both spun round at Clint's loud voice. His expression was a few stages above panic. "I don't do prides. Most I ever went up to was triad, and that was an utter mess."

"I pointed out when I first met you all that we weren't even a team. Chaotic reactions don't make for good prides," Bruce added. He too suddenly looked twitchy. 

Silence fell. Somewhere small in Pepper's mind registered that Natasha hadn't complained. The rest of it was busy digesting that this group of people were definitely not a pride, and that Steve really was clueless enough to go to Tony first.

Steve broke the silence first, looking from face to face with a lost expression. "But ... "

Pepper took pity on him, and with difficulty softened her voice. "Prides are a way of living, and a way of loving, that doesn't suit everyone."

He narrowed his eyes. "This isn't about Tony. This is about you. You're just a nomad."

She leapt to her feet. The slur, with all its implications of rejection, wasn't a new one, but it had always, always been a sore one. "I am not!" She clenched her fists and tried to regain control of herself, but her words still came out as a shout. "I am half of a fully bonded pair, and the fact that I don't want to share is completely irrelevant! You stood on my territory and scruffed my mate, and tried to coerce him into something he's never wanted!"

His gaze wavered again. "I thought it was Tony's territory. It has his name on it."

Words fell out of her mouth without her brain's agreement; "It's 12% Tony's territory." 

He tried to rise; she kneed him in the temple. He doubled over with a pained sound. She stood over him, fists clenched, willing him to get back up. None of them would stop her this time, now that they knew the situation. 

Time ticked away. Showing a degree of patience and common sense that he hadn't yet shown in the conversation, Steve stayed down and still for all of it. Gradually, she calmed down. As soon as she stepped backwards, Steve said something. HIs voice was muffled by his hands still clutching at his temple.

"Pardon?" she asked, politely.

He raised his head, not far enough for yet another challenge but just enough so that she could see his face.

"I said I'm sorry. For trying to ... steal ... your mate. I didn't mean it like that. I didn't ... I guess I just didn't think." 

"No, you obviously didn't." She tucked her hair neatly behind her ears and sighed. "You need to apologise to Tony. He'll try and tell you not to bother and probably insult your 'manliness', but do it anyway, ok? Then you and your team need to have a long talk about ... semantics." 

All of a sudden, she didn't want to be in that room a second longer. She stood so quickly that she nearly lost her balance, and left the room at a rapid click without looking at any of the others. Bruce called her name, but she ignored him and shut the door firmly.

Back in her office, she sat and stared blindly at the computer screen. The leftovers of adrenalin had hit her; the shakes, the chills. It reminded her of how she felt after destroying Killian.

She'd done that to protect Tony, too. 

"Pepper, honey?" 

She looked up. Tony stood in front of her, looking worried. She sucked in a shaky breath.

"Yeah?"

Tony knelt down. He raised his chin and took his hands out of his pockets to dangle them at his sides. Throat and stomach exposed: body language for I trust you. He met her eyes and blinked slowly and deliberately: I love you. With a wobbly half-laugh, she slid off her chair and hugged him. He hugged her back tightly. She let herself shake in his embrace, and buried her face in his neck. 

"You were watching, weren't you?" she mumbled several minutes later, dropping a kiss on his Adam’s apple. 

"The security cameras needed maintenance." She straightened up and gave him a mock-glare.

"And the sound systems?"

He gave her a brash smile. "I'm trying to interlink the two. More efficient. You see ..." She rolled her eyes and sighed, and let the science babble wash over her. 

" ... and, by the way, you smell like sex. Which is great. So, to steal a quote from a wonderful woman with a strange tendency to jump to my defence - I'm going to take a shower. You're going to join me."

She laughed. A proper laugh, this time. "Ok."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you think! I hope everyone found this suitably satisfying. I have a couple of potential ideas for a verse of this, but I make no promises at all. XD


End file.
